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Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen"):
dantheclamman@scicomm.xyz ("Dr. Dan Killam") wrote:

The shells of snails and clams look quite different, but every clam shell actually contains a hidden spiral, hinting at their shared ancestry. In a classic series of papers in the 1960s, David Raup figured out that all mollusk shell shapes are governed by a logarithmic spiral model. Varying four parameters, a vast variety of shapes can be made. Others built on the model since, but the Raup model was an important advance in reverse engineering the brilliance of the mollusk shell. #clamFacts

A schematic showing a sequence of shapes between a long spiral cone of a snail and less coiled shapes with comparatively larger whorls, leading to a clam shell, which has a hint of a coil at the "beak" but is otherwise just a giant concave shell opening (aperture)